Whereas the study of postcolonial South Asia used to be the preserve of political scientists, historians have found their feet, and books about the early years after independence are now coming thick and fast. The Stanford University Press series, South Asia in Motion, which has published Sunil Purushotham’s new book From Raj to Republic, is at the forefront of this important trend pushing our understanding of independent India and Pakistan in new directions.

Drawing together the histories of Hyderabad (Deccan) and Punjab over the years roughly 1946–1952, the main focus of Purushotham’s work is the nexus between violence, the state, sovereignty and citizenship. He argues that the violence of partition and the integration of the princely states was „both destructive and productive, disintegrative and integrative“ (p. 248), thereby connecting it to new forms of sovereignty and citizenship.

Throughout the book, Purushotham demonstrates that he is a skilled historian. His work is grounded in the archive, and he capitalises on the fact that files from the Ministry of States at the National Archives of India have been opened, providing a rich picture of political developments over the years of independence, partition and the integration of the princely states. In addition, he deploys materials from state archives, non-official institutions, newspapers, published reports and memoirs to good effect.

One surprising aspect of the volume is that the introduction does not engage in the usual historiographical mapping that is the norm for a first monograph of this kind. It contains no examination of the existing scholarship on partition or the integration of the princely states.1 Nor is the analytical frame set up in an elaborate manner. The new and exciting sub-field that historicises and complicates understandings of sovereignty, to which this book makes an important contribution, is not surveyed.2 Indeed, the introduction spans just nine pages. For those of us who open the pages of new books in our field expecting to be the targets of quick-witted historiographical critique, it is a private relief! Overall, this choice will probably divide readers: some will crave a sharper statement of how the book is pushing analytical concepts or the historiography of the field in new directions. Others, particularly those who find themselves in need of an extra dose of caffeine when ploughing through complicated theory or arcane historiographical debates, will find it makes the work more accessible.

After this brief introduction, the first chapter is a run through the history of the princely state of Hyderabad, covering its internal history, but centred on its constitutional relationship with the British. The achievement here is to show that the princely states, and Hyderabad in particular, were central to constitutional developments in India (p. 73), and therefore, to the historical development of Indian sovereignty. The second chapter explores the aftermath of the Police Action, which, in September 1948, forcibly integrated Hyderabad State into the Indian Union. The original contribution here is the attention paid to the popular campaigns against the ruler, the Nizam, which were waged by the Hyderabad State Congress and Hindu nationalist groups. Purushotham argues, persuasively, that in the campaign to integrate Hyderabad, the central government in New Delhi did not monopolise violence, but rather dispersed it through these non-official groups (p. 111).

In the centre section of the book, Purushotham moves his focus north to Punjab during the years of partition. Though he does not expressly justify the decision to focus on Punjab and Hyderabad (as opposed to other regions of South Asia), or the connection between the two, he pulls his argument about the dispersal of violence at the moment of independence through these chapters. In chapter three, he covers violence against Dalits and against women, reminding us that, although the violence of partition was universal, it was neither homogenous nor homogenising (p. 157). Chapter four centres on testimonies and petitions from survivors of partition, making claims to citizenship and calling on the independent state for protection. He asserts that the violence of partition gave rise to a new regime of sovereignty and of citizenship.

The final two chapters return to Hyderabad but focus on the Telangana people’s armed struggle (1944–1951). As he had done in the chapters on Punjab, chapter five maintains a focus on marginalised and subordinated sections of society, especially the Adivasi groups who participated in the rebellion. In tracking the state’s response to the uprising, Purushotham historicises the „encounter“ and the mobilising of Gram Raksha Dals (Village Defence Squads) in rural areas, two techniques which have gained prominence in later campaigns against Maoist insurgencies. The state’s dispersal of violence in this case was towards loyalist amateur defence forces. Chapter six is a survey of the participation of Adivasis in the armed struggle, and the counterinsurgency efforts against them. Breaking new ground here, Purushotham explores the ways in which the Communists made common cause with Koya, Lambada and other Adivasi groups. The official response was a programme of forcibly resettling the Adivasi populations in „Welfare Centres“ or „Rural Development Centres“, which the Communists dubbed concentration camps. These camps, Purushotham argues, were sites of the „violent transformation of the colonial ethnographic state into the postcolonial developmental state“ (p. 227) at which ethnographic knowledge was weaponised for new purposes.

The short conclusion is a masterclass in succinctly summarising arguments and deftly drawing together the themes of the separate chapters. Throughout the book, the writing is mature and the facts clearly evidenced. Overall, readers will find this is a carefully researched and highly readable account of an important period in the history of the Indian subcontinent.

Notes:
1 Reviews of the literature include: Joya Chatterji, Partition Studies. Prospects and Pitfalls, in: The Journal of Asian Studies 73,2 (2014), pp. 309–312; and Fiona Groenhout, The History of the Indian Princely States. Bringing the Puppets Back onto the Stage, in: History Compass 4:4 (2006), pp. 629–644.
2 Andreas Osiander, Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth, in: International Organization 55,2 (2001), pp. 251–287. For South Asia, see Eric Beverley / Lewis Beverley, Hyderabad, British India, and the World: Muslim Networks and Minor Sovereignty, c.1850–1950, Cambridge 2015; Muzaffar Alam, Envisioning power. The political thought of a late eighteenth-century Mughal prince, in: Indian Economic and Social History Review 43,2 (2006), pp. 131–161; Raphaëlle Khan, Sovereignty after the Empire and the Search for a New Order. India’s Attempt to negotiate a Common Citizenship in the Commonwealth (1947–1949), in: The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (forthcoming).